Pennsylvania Dutch "hex signs," in their own words.



The following quotations relate to Pennsylvania Dutch or German Hex Signs.   The fellow speaking is a Pennsylvania Dutch or German farmer.  His story (and the quotations) are presented in a fictional novel about the Pennsylvania Fancy Dutch (or non-Amish) community.  The book is the second in a series written by Ronald Ray Schmeck.  This one is titled FURTHER FROM THE MIDDLE, A PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH STORY OF LIFE. 



    "Arsenic had paused to examine the red paint on the outside of the barn.  He was trying to decide whether it needed to be repainted.  He concluded that it would be O.K. for another two or three years.  It usually lasted at least ten years.  The old Pennsylvania Dutch had been mixing their own paints for over two hundred years.  The Berks area was full of iron oxide deposits that yielded beautiful red, yellow, orange, and dark brown pigments that were mixed with gum resins from fruit tree sap, boiled linseed oil, and buttermilk, all provided by nature.  These paints often outlasted those commercially available.
    There was a huge hex sign, eight feet in diameter, on the end of the barn Arsenic was inspecting.  It was bordered in yellow and featured two overlapping red stylized birds, or distelfinks, on a field of purple.  It too had been painted with homemade paint and seemed to be in excellent condition.  Decorated “hex barns,” as the tourist’s called them, usually indicated a “fancy” Dutch homestead rather than an Amish one.  The Amish were called “plain” for a reason.  They didn’t paint decorations all over their barns.
    Regan walked up while Arsenic was staring up at the hex sign.
    “You expecting some hexerei?”
    Arsenic chuckled and said, “Nah.  Chust checkin da paint.  Dem hex signs doan haff nothin ta do vith hexerei anyvays!”
    “Well the tourists think they do.”
    Arsenic simply shrugged and said, “Yah vell!”
    In fact, the arguments connecting “hex signs” and Pennsylvania Dutch hexerei, or witchcraft, are a little airy.  Some traders told tourists that the colorful, round geometric designs were a way to avoid disease and accidents in farm animals if they were verhexed by hexerei, such as witches' spells and their evil eye.  But the circular patterns just seem to be a form of folk art, not terribly different from the fraktur art on official Pennsylvania Dutch documents like eighteenth and nineteenth centuries birth and babtismal certificates, called taufschein.  The birds and flowers used by fraktur schriften artists are similar to the images on hex signs.  Painted kitchenware, or toleware, also tends to include such images.
    “Herbie Goodhart painted dat.”  Arsenic said, pointing with his nose toward the hex sign.  “He verks dahn at Hank Dienst’s body shop in Fleetvoot.”
    Looking up at the sign, Regan said, “I thought Ruby said Jake Zook painted that?”
    “Nah.  Not dat von.”
    During the 1940’s, Jacob Zook started producing beautiful hex signs in Paradise, Pennsylvania.  The early barn art had been painted directly on barns, but Zook made it portable and brought the cost down by painting on a slab of wood that tourists could take back home with them as a souvenir when they visited Pennsylvania Dutch country.
    Little hex signs started to appear as logos on products such as pretzel cans.  As the popularity of the art form spread, the story that it was a defense against devilry seemed to spread right along with it.
    The troublesome woodpecker that had taken a liking to Arsenic’s barn showed up again and started hammering within ten feet of Arsenic and Regan as they were talking.
    Arsenic looked at the bird and yelled, “Geh’veg.  Get ought’a here!”  And he slapped his hand on the barn wall several times to scare it off."


"The early Pennsylvania Dutch did hold some unusual superstitions with regard to their barns.  Legends suggested that the shingles should be nailed on while the moon is waning, or they would leak.  Also, they believed the larger the barn a man built, the more good luck he would have.  But then, of course, a big barn could be a favorite target for the evil eye of a neighbor, as well as his jealousy.
    In Reading, in the year 1820, John George Hohman published an influential German-language magical recipe book filled with spells, procedures, and yes, even recipes.  The title was Der lang verborgene Schatz und Haus Freund.  English translations were later printed in Carlisle and Harrisburg, with one titled Pow-Wows, or The Long-Lost Friend.
    Hohman was an artist who specialized in fracturschrifften, writing and illustrating precious official documents such as birth and marriage certificates.  Some say he developed an interest in hoodoo by praying over his documents.  He eventually acquired quite a collection of folksy and wizardly information, presented in his book.
    For example, a wart might be treated by rubbing the wet half of a cut potato on it and then burying the potato.  As the potato rotted, the wart was supposed to fall off.  Also, you were not supposed to tickle a child less than a year old, because it might cause it to stutter.  And then, of course, there was the thing about burying a dead calf under the eaves of the barn roof, or nailing a dog skull to the rafters.  Indeed, the use of a horseshoe for good luck started in a Pennsylvania Dutch barn.
    In 1929, teenagers in York, Pennsylvania, were accused of murdering a man while attempting to steel a copy of Hohman’s book of Pow-Wows.  It was said that the three boys were also trying to obtain a lock of the victim’s hair to use for turning around a hex the boys believed to have been put on them by the supposed witch and murder victim, Nelson Rehmeyer.  The kids thought Rehmeyer used Hohman’s book to learn how to hex people.
    The trial got international attention because of the mention of witchcraft, and because it was occurring two-hundred-and-fifty years after the notorious Salem, Massachusetts witch trials where people were actually burned at the stake.
    One famous lawyer, outraged by the stiff sentences handed down at the York trial, wrote articles in the national media saying that education was better than harsh punishment to deter crimes like the one in York, Pennsylvania.  The lawyer’s name was Clarence Darrow, and he was famous for having defended the high school teacher John T. Scopes, accused of illegally teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution to Tennessee public school students.  Anyway, Clarence Darrow helped draw attention to Dutch superstitions."

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